Federal government's own policies could harm ecosystems

Climate experts said the internal government document demonstrates the weaknesses of Environment Minister John Baird's negotiating position at the UN conference in Bali, Indonesia.Photo by
Reuters

The Harper government is opening the door to "wide-reaching" and "large scale" impacts to the earth's ecosystems because of its refusal to recognize a tipping point in the battle against global warming as it heads into a major United Nations climate change summit that begins on Monday, warns a newly-released federal document.

Foreign Affairs officials who prepared the internal research paper suggested that the government could improve its environmental policies if it recognized the dangers associated with allowing human activity to contribute to warming the planet's average temperature by more than two degrees Celsius.

"The scientific uncertainty surrounding the temperature increase thresholds that would trigger global scale impacts (i.e., slowing of the North Atlantic Ocean currents, collapse of Greenland and/or West Antarctic ice sheets), highlights the merits of a precautionary approach," reads the document that was released to the Pembina Institute following an access to information request. "Some recent studies suggest that these wide-reaching, large-scale impacts could be triggered by a temperature increase as low as one degree Celsius (to) two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels."

The background analysis was produced on May 1, 2007, a few weeks before Prime Minister Stephen Harper attended a summit of leaders from the world's eight largest economies in Germany where the European Union countries were calling for a new climate treaty that would require targets and policies to avoid crossing the two degree threshold.

Under the leadership of former prime minister Brian Mulroney in 1992, Canada signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which called on countries to take measures to ensure human activity would not cause dangerous changes to the climate. But 15 years later, the federal government has still not defined what it considers to be dangerous.

While the Canadian experts acknowledged the need for more research on impacts, it noted that the two-degree guideline has enabled European countries to implement effective climate change policies.

"This (two-degree Celsius) limit has helped EU decision-makers to target research and focus policy development," reads the document. "These outcomes indicate that there may be merit in focusing on a certain preliminary 'range' of temperatures or GHG stabilization levels, which can be revisited as knowledge improves."

Clare Demerse, a climate policy expert at the Pembina Institute, an environmental research group, said the internal government document demonstrates the weaknesses of Environment Minister John Baird's negotiating position at the UN conference in Bali, Indonesia.

"There is strong scientific evidence and a broad consensus that two degrees is a threshold that the world must agree not to cross," said Demerse. "Unfortunately, and despite advice from within the government in support of a similar temperature limit, Minister Baird has never explained what he considers to be dangerous climate change."

Baird said he doesn't know whether setting a two degree limit would force large polluting countries such as the United States, China and India to reduce their emissions, so he would rather focus on defining the actions and commitments that are necessary.

"I think people are setting the policy but not setting what action that (policy) will entail," he said following a breakfast speech to the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce on Friday. "We're already seeing the results (of a 0.6 degrees Celsius average global temperature increase) in every single continent and in every single sea and ocean. It doesn't have to rise to two (degrees) for us to declare it an environmental state of emergency and ask for all hands on deck, and that's exactly what we're doing."

But in a letter sent to Harper this weekend, Liberal leader Stephane Dion urged the government to push for a new agreement that would prevent dangerous warming of the climate.

"At this crucial moment, Canada cannot afford to be a laggard," wrote Dion. "It must help the world community come to agreement that we will not allow global climate to change more than two degrees Celsius."

Baird has announced a plan for Canada to meet its Kyoto targets about 20 years behind schedule, but it has not yet introduced regulations to crack down on greenhouse gas pollution from large industries.

In its Nobel-Peace prize winning assessment of the latest peer-reviewed research on global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded this year that the world would be forced to adapt to rising temperatures in the coming decades because of the heat-trapping gases that were already in the atmosphere. But the panel also noted that nations could avoid some future impacts by drastically reducing the harmful emissions that are produced from human activity and energy-intensive industries that burn fossil fuels.

Numerous world leaders have suggested that the 2007 IPCC report should be used as the basis for a new international treaty that expands the legally-binding commitments of the Kyoto Protocol - an update to the original UN climate change treaty from 1992. Representatives from nearly 200 countries are expected to hammer out a framework for the next phase of Kyoto at the Bali conference, but they are anticipating another two years of negotiations before finalizing a new deal.

Emerging economies such as India and Brazil have been reluctant to take on targets that would hamper their economies, arguing that the developed world should be transferring wealth to help them reduce emissions since it has caused much of the pollution that is now trapping heat in the atmosphere. Indian government officials have said they are willing to consider doing their share based on a per-capita basis, or the amount of pollution per individual.

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